Remember that old joke, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” with the response, “Practice!” Aspiring singers, take heed:  It pays. Preparation is behind Rita Gardner’s Try to Remember: A Look Back at Off-Broadway, including a remarkably seamless delivery of  “Carousel” (Jacques Brel with Eric Blau’s English lyrics), a fierce slide from lilting music box waltz to a wild dance of madness.

While practicing for this well-constructed performance, it pays to have a fine musical director and pianist like Alex Rybeck to match the obsessiveness of “Carousel” as creatively as he does the impressionistic “Lazy Afternoon” (Jerome Moss and John Latouche) and a medley of 13 Off-Broadway snippets. Speaking of that medley, many songs barely two bars, with the result a brisk reminder of the great shows that took root Off-Broadway, from Dames at Sea and Little Mary Sunshine to Hair and Rent.

Singer/actress Rita Gardner has been honing a show about her long show biz history for over ten years. She appeared as the original Luisa in Off-Broadway’s The Fantasticks in 1960, and then moved into other Off-Broadway, regional, television and Broadway roles. In this show, she concentrates on articulate anecdotes about performing Off-Broadway, which, she comments, was “not a location but a destination.”  There were never more than 300 seats, “most of them broken,” and the street was always dark. Gardner is a delightful, easy raconteur, vivacious and enthusiastic, with concentrated audience rapport and a robust soprano voice. Yes, time has tarnished the vocal edges and lent her voice a rough vibrato but she belts or croons her tunes with assurance. She stays with the intent of her selections and often touches the heart, as in a nostalgic pairing of “I Miss You” (Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones) with Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban’s “What I Did for Love.”

Before she was in The Fantasticks, Gardner met a young songwriter, Jerry Herman, and was in his revue, Nightcap, from which she sings “No Tune Like a Show Tune,” with familiar melody lines of a future “It’s Today” (Mame) and “Your Good Morning” with the flickering phrase of a later “Ribbons Down My Back” (Hello, Dolly!). From the melodic good humor of Jerry Herman, Gardner is equally present with the caustic David Shire and Richard Maltby, Jr. “I Don’t Remember Christmas.”

Yet, the shows she was in were a labor of love, and to bring the audience back to her prime time, Gardner added Rybeck, director Barry Kleinbort to craft the mood, and musical staging by Pamela Sousa. “Practice, practice, practice,” but also get the best in the field to help and you may deliver a show as entertaining as Rita Gardner’s Try to Remember: A Look Back at Off-Broadway.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
September 17, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org